Displaying All Posts in the Communication category

HTMLform.com + WordPress: Gather Feedback with Style

Editor’s Note: This is a sponsored post. Did you teach a course to a group recently? Have you ever made a presentation before your co-workers? Do you usually write and distribute reports? If yes, did you bother to ask your colleagues their feedback or opinion about how it went? From a more commercial or business perspective, do you ask your customers their opinion about the products or services you provide? Do you have some sort of standard questionnaire available to your customers? Asking for opinions, feedback, gathering assessments about your work constitutes, in my opinion, the most powerful tool in our way to excellence. Click Here to Read Article …

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Happy Employees: How to Create Them

Happy Employees: How to Create Them

It’s expensive to train employees but it’s even more so to lose one. Figures don’t lie. Although employee turnover in the US is at a low 1.4 percent, the fact remains that the cost of losing an employee may cost a company 25 to 250 percent of his annual income.

Managers always face the challenge of ensuring that their employees remain productive and happy with their jobs. But how can one tell happy employees from unhappy ones? Click Here to Read Article …

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Perception – Key to Inner Peace

I’ve come to believe our perception at work and life in general carries a great deal of importance.

Many years ago while striving to climb the “corporate ladder to success”, my boss asked me to meet with him privately, in a very serious, foreboding tone of voice.

I immediately scoured my mind for reasons, or any of my actions that may have prompted this out of the ordinary request, fearing something terrible had occurred unknowingly to me, and walked into his office with more than a heightened sense of apprehension. Click Here to Read Article …

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7 Ways to an Effective Team Meeting

7 Ways to an Effective Team Meeting

The top management has just assigned a very important project to your department. You eagerly gather your team and show them what the management wants. Your teammates share their opinions, brainstorm on ideas, laugh a little, and tell stories on their personal lives.

After two hours, you adjourn the meeting, anticipating what the team can and will do on this project. A week later, you ask your staff for updates and no one gives a good enough answer. You ask yourself, “Where are the accomplishments?”

It’s a common dilemma of managers. Many hours are spent on team meetings only to realize that nobody is clear on what they must do and nothing is accomplished. Click Here to Read Article …

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Why We Should Say “No”

A good friend of mine recently shared a secret with me. When I asked her how she managed to stay so calm, cool and collected, she told me it was something she learned years ago that has helped her both professionally and personally.

She learned to say “NO”.

Personal Observations

After listening to her share how this has changed her life, I tried to do this myself. While I’m still learning and caving once in awhile, I can now clearly see the benefits of using this little two-lettered word when need be.

You can do it too. It’s an easy way to change your life without spending any of your money or time. Try to say no more often and enjoy these benefits: Click Here to Read Article …

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Networking Tips for Freelancers

Networking Tips for Freelancers

The idea of working at home is a dream for a lot of people and for good reason. Let’s face it: Who doesn’t like the idea of staying indoors in a nice warm house on a cold snowy winter day when everyone else is scraping ice off their windows so they can make a long slow commute during rush hour?

Problem is, there are some downsides to working at home, and I’m not talking about the obvious ones such as getting distracted or trying to constantly get away from home and work. I’m talking about something that can seriously hurt your professional career if you let it.

In business, it’s all about who you know and who you can call when you need a favor; you can’t put a price on having a good friend in your industry who will help you out in a jam. Networking is not hard if you work in a large office building with lots of people around who you talk to daily or at least occasionally. Working at home however is another story. Click Here to Read Article …

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The Art of Persuasion: How to Hone Your Influencing Skills

The Art of Persuasion: How to Hone Your Influencing Skills

The art of persuasion, of influencing the people around you, is a vital skill in the workplace. Without it, you’ll simply be ineffective. Sure, you can bend people to your iron will, or get people to do what you want with compulsion, manipulation or coercion, but at the cost of trust and long-term cooperation with colleagues or customers.

Persuasion is a different beast; subtle, but far more powerful in the long-term. So, how can you can you hone your influencing skills, to benefit yourself and those around you? Well, there’s a certain amount of groundwork you need to lay first.

Whether it’s a telephone pitch to a potential client or influencing colleagues at work, the same principles apply even if the timescales differ

It’s not (just) about the benefits.

We all know there are things we should be doing for our own benefit, but never quite get round to. The forces that motivate us aren’t quite as simple as personal gain or loss, punishment or reward.

You can have an incredible pitch on paper, but people will respond to you, or rather how they perceive you, as much as what you have to say.

Emotion screws with the wiring when we make decisions. Of course you need the numbers, but it’s never enough just to make them understand your case. They have to be eager to do business with you.
Click Here to Read Article …

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Forget PowerPoint! How to Deliver Awesome Presentations

There’s nothing worse than falling asleep during a presentation…

This time, I’m going to stay awake. So far, so good… I’m following what he’s saying… But I wonder why the text on the screen looks really black, when the area around the slide looks kind of grey? It’s just the colour of the screen so it should look the same. I mean you can’t project more black. Must be a contrast thing. Aren’t brains weird? Wait a minute, what was he saying? Now my eyelids are getting heavy…

If you’ve ever had that feeling of jerking awake as your head falls off your shoulders, you’ll know there’s nothing much worse than trying to stay awake during a dull presentation. Everyone behind you has noticed your head making small circles and slow-bouncing nods — but no matter how hard you try, you just can’t stay awake. You’re a bear hit with a tranquilizer dart — you can fight it, but after a few wobbly steps you’re going down. You just have to hope you don’t start drooling or let out any inadvertent snorts as you wake up.

Come to think of it, there is one thing that’s worse. It’s far worse to be the one delivering a bad presentation.

A half-hour talk given to an audience of 20 uses up 10 hours of other people’s time. There’s no reason in the world not to make it awesome. Here’s how you can stop draining people with your presentations and start delivering awesome ones.
Click Here to Read Article …

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